by Various
The world was full of unexplainable things. And now, to her delight, she was truly one of them.
The End
Elevator
Adam Millard
Sean Cooper climbed breathlessly towards his apartment, wishing he’d had the foresight to view the block before accepting a flat there. At the time, he’d been happy for a roof over his head—any roof—and he’d practically snatched the landlord’s hand off. It was cheap, the bills were inclusive, and despite the notoriety of the surrounding area, it wasn’t a bad place to live once you made it to the safety of the concierge.
But that had been almost a month ago, and a month of traversing the stairs up to the fifteenth floor had changed his mind, somewhat. For a thirty year-old, he was badly out of shape. If he wasn’t smoking, he was drinking, and if he wasn’t drinking, he wasn’t happy. He hadn’t been able to find work in almost five years, and relied on the government handouts to fund his less than salubrious lifestyle. The landlord had no problem with accepting Housing Benefit; in fact, he preferred it, told Sean it was guaranteed and he didn’t have to go knocking doors and busting heads. Sean wasn’t sure whether he liked the landlord, but he appreciated what the guy had done for him since moving in.
He’d taken all of the old shit and tossed it out, saving Sean a weekend’s work. He’d even gone so far as giving the place a fresh coat of paint, getting rid of the tobacco-tinged walls that the previous tenant had worked so hard to attain. The place was his castle, and he had a great view of the city from the front window, as well as the hospital from the back. Sometimes, he would pull up a chair and watch the gangs scuffling below. Up there, he was safe, and some nights he would be treated to a good fight or a stabbing, providing he was still sober enough to focus on the melee.
He panted as he reached the seventh floor, swapped the plastic bag dangling from his right hand to the other side and shook the cramps off. There were three large bottles of cider in the bag, which had to be double-bagged due to the weight. It was enough to last him the night, with maybe a half-litre for breakfast. He smiled at the thought before pushing onwards and upwards.
Kids were letting fireworks off somewhere in the building. Sean guessed they were down in the parking-lot, where they usually hung out, flipping skateboards and staging bare-knuckle boxing matches. If they were down there, then they weren’t up here, and that was all that mattered.
“You’re gonna be in real big trouble, soon, you don’t quit drinkin’”
Sean spun, expecting to see someone behind him. There was nobody there. The words had been spoken a couple of hours before by his doctor, the guy who signed his sick-notes for him once a month. The fact he was hearing him now was no surprise; Sean often heard voices, real or imaginary. His doctor had gone on one of his little tirades, informing Sean of the dangers he faced, using scare-tactics and a mouldy fucking liver in a jar to get his point across. Sean had sat listening; nodding occasionally, and thinking about the off-licence and the goodies he was going to buy once he got out of there.
It was all tickety-boo for the doctor, who no doubt had a wife and a couple of kids to keep him on the straight and narrow; the doctor who still had a mouthful of his own teeth because he’d had an upbringing where it was drummed into him to brush those pearly little cunts twice-a-day. Yeah, that guy had never suffered, not like Sean, not like most.
Twelfth floor. This was where he usually lit a cigarette. By the time he reached the fifteenth it would be down to the butt; it was sort of a ritual, like OCD but a lot friendlier.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and dug into his pockets for his cigarettes. He took out the box, pushed one into the corner of his mouth and lit it.
Just then, the door on Twelfth swung open. A man dressed in a chequered shirt and brown chinos came through it. The man winced, as if the sight of Sean doubled over, trying to get his breath, was the worst thing he’d ever laid eyes upon. Sean didn’t—couldn’t—speak. Instead he watched as the guy tried not to make eye-contact.
‘You do know there’s an elevator?’ the man finally said as he tried to squeeze past Sean’s fatigued form.
Sean did know, but he also knew that he was afraid of the things, always had been. It wasn’t claustrophobia, or at least he didn’t think it was. He’d been trapped in tight places before and never once panicked. No, this was something else; there was something about elevators that just frightened the shit out of him.
‘I know,’ Sean panted, before taking a long, hard pull on his cigarette.
The man, who looked like the type of guy who still lived with his mummy and only went out to run errands for her, said, ‘You’re new, aren’t you?’
Sean shook his head and straightened up. If this guy wanted a full-blown conversation, he would have had more luck talking to the firework-kids downstairs.
‘I haven’t seen you before.’ The man’s frown knitted his eyebrows together. He licked his lips, which freaked Sean out a little. ‘What floor are you on?’
Sean didn’t want to tell this prick where he lived. He’d made the effort to remain incognito since moving in, for the simple reason that he didn’t want to associate with any of the crack-heads, prostitutes, dealers, pimps, gangsters and crazies that filled up the other apartments. Sure, this guy seemed like none of the above, but he was living in the block for a reason, which immediately made him one of them, or in cahoots with one of them.
The man must have sensed Sean’s reluctance. ‘I don’t blame you,’ he said, wiggling his finger around in his ear as if he was mining for gold. ‘Just keepin’ yourself to yourself, huh? Well, me and my mother are in 42 if you ever need anything.’
Bingo: Mother’s boy.
Sean watched as the man made his way down the flight of stairs. When he reached the bottom, he turned and said, ‘Dennis, by the way.’
‘Sorry?’ Sean said, wishing the man would just go away; he was wasting good drinking time.
The man sniggered, and there was something eerie about it. ‘My name,’ he said. ‘You didn’t ask it. It’s Dennis.’
Well, ain’t that just the perfect fucking name for a Mummy’s boy? Sean thought, but didn’t say. ‘Nice to meet you, Dennis,’ he lied. ‘Probably bump into you again at some point.’ He hoped not.
Without another word, Dennis turned and cornered the stairs. Sean listened as the sound of footfall on concrete waned, and when it was distant enough he heaved a sigh of relief.
‘Fuckin’ loonies in this place,’ he muttered before continuing up the stairs.
He reached the fifteenth floor and pushed the door which led to the hallway. He started as four men turned to face him.
They had just been standing there, doing whatever illegal activity they were doing in the hallway. They were now trying not to look suspicious, which only made them look even more so, and yet it was Sean that felt uneasy. His apartment was the last on the right, which meant he had to go past this group of thugs if he wanted to get home. He glanced at them—not for too long—and realised that they practically filled the hallway. Not one of them was what you might call regular-size; these were big boys with even bigger attitudes, and Sean didn’t fancy his chances much.
Still, what choice did he have? He stepped forward, allowing the door to shut behind him on its slow-close hinge. If the men had been talking before his unannounced arrival, they weren’t any more. They were watching him, sizing him up to see if he was any threat—which of course he wasn’t.
Don’t slow down, Sean told himself. If they sensed his fear, they’d be all over him. Any trepidation on his part would invite an assault, or at least mockery. He wanted neither.
Just then, the door to the apartment the men were standing outside swung inwards revealing a woman Sean recognised. She’d held the door open for him when he was wheeling his TV through a few weeks back. Susan, or Sharon, he couldn’t remember.
The men, though, eased up as she appeared. ‘Hey, Sharon,’ one of the men said, smiling with a mouthful of broken and
discoloured teeth. ‘Just here to discuss your payment scheme.’
Sharon shrugged and stepped aside; the men filed through the door. ‘Hey,’ she said as Sean walked by.
‘Hello,’ Sean said, not looking up from the stained carpet that stretched the length of the hall. In his periphery, he could see the looming shapes of the four thugs, and he wasn’t sure if they were looking at him or awaiting Sharon’s presence.
He reached his own door. Safety, or something like it. Sharon closed hers, and Sean could hear the men laughing and joking, though he didn’t, for some reason, think Sharon was as happy as they were.
‘None of my business,’ he mumbled, slipping the key into the lock and entering his apartment.
The first thing that hit him was the smell. The fumes of the paint had faded not long after Sean moved in, and now the place had a mustiness that seemed to follow him wherever he went. It wasn’t unpleasant—not to him, anyway—but it was there, and after a few hours out of the apartment it was all the more noticeable.
The second thing he noticed was the mess. There were empty pizza-boxes haphazardly strewn across the beer-stained and cigarette-burnt carpet. A pile of newspapers had slowly built up around the only chair in the room, and as a result Sean could only just make out about thirty percent of the floor. Empty or half-filled beer-cans sat upon shelves, the TV, his bedside table, and if he was to check the bathroom, the sink, the shelf above the sink and the airing-cupboard. He seldom cleaned, and when he did it was a simple case of collecting the empties in a black bag and tossing it down the chute. He didn’t own a duster, or polish or any of that bottled shit which got your windows all nice and shiny. He had a roll of refuse-sacks and a dustpan and brush in case the silverfish got out of hand.
He made his way into the kitchen area, which was no bigger than most people need to take a dump. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes, and flies buzzed around them. The flies didn’t bother him, nor did the carpet beetles or the woolly bears. They were just bugs, and paid about as much rent as he did. Who the hell was he to judge?
He located a semi-clean glass and unscrewed the cap on one of the bottles. Over the fizz of settling alcohol, Sean could hear banging and laughing from Sharon’s apartment. He guessed Sharon had accepted the new payment-scheme and was bringing the debt up to date by servicing the four burly bastards and sending them on their way. They’d be back next week, and the week after that, though Sean guessed his neighbour didn’t have much in the way of options. It was probably either this, or a one-way trip out the window and down to the street.
Sean thought of the four toothless men and the way they had menaced him in the hallway. It was just a personal preference, but he would have chosen the window.
He shifted the magazines—some porn, some not—from his seat and sank slowly into it. He switched the TV on and began to flick through the channels, only to find that each was more depressing than the last.
One of the drawbacks of unemployment was daytime television. It comprised of chat-shows hosted by patronising assholes in pinstripe suits, with guests who were either inbred, abused, drugged-up, or thieves. After arguing the toss over whether the lie-detector results were reliable, the guests would disperse only to be replaced by another lowlife scum-bag. It was fairly repetitive, and Sean couldn’t bear to watch. Next up were the cookery programmes; a stations’ assumption that all people at home at this hour were able to get up and start fucking baking. Twenty-four hour news was next—the same shit repeated every fifteen minutes unless something interesting had happened, and then there were live cameras on scene, mobile-phone footage, CCTV footage, interviews with witnesses and drawn out interviews with specialists or psychologists, depending on whether there had been an earthquake in some God-forsaken third-world country or a shooting in a suburban neighbourhood. Then there were the cartoons featuring a selection of mutated… things running around trying to work their way out of trouble. If it wasn’t a sponge living under the sea, it was a bunch of malformed clay stop-motioned to within an inch of its life. Sean didn’t have kids, and he doubted he ever would, and with the shit they were put through on TV, he was grateful for it.
The cider, though; oh, that made everything better. Soon, he would be buzzing, unable to even see the TV, let alone watch the shit on it. He finished his first glass in five minutes. Within an hour he’d worked his way through three litres, and was feeling nice and cosy up there in the sky surrounded by bugs, trash and low-brow magazines.
Fireworks erupted just outside his window. He heard the gentle fizzle, followed by a disappointing bang, and the room filled with an orange glow momentarily.
It had just started to get dark when he fell asleep, his head tingling and thumping from the booze and the background noise of some London soap-opera seeping out of the TV’s speakers like CS in a gas-chamber.
When somebody knocked at his door with a vehemence usually utilized by the police, Sean lunged from his chair and grabbed the nearest thing to him, which happened to be one of the half-empty cider bottles. The alcohol sloshed around as he stood in the dark, trying to figure out if he had been dreaming or if there was actually somebody on the other side of the door.
The television was now showing some comedy panel-show, and an Irishman was ranting on about something that had happened in the news that week to comedic effect. Sean reached down and snatched up the remote. He pushed the mute-button, and listened, cocking his ear in the direction of the door as if it would make a blind bit of difference.
Nothing.
But still he waited. Whoever was out there—if indeed they were out there—would have heard the noise from his TV, and would have now been listening to the silence, awaiting an answer.
Still nothing.
Sean slowly, and cautiously, made his way across the room. His feet were only inches away from clattering something, be it an empty beer-can or a pile of discarded takeaway boxes, and it paid to be extra-careful.
Now that the TV was muted, Sean could only hear the steady hush-thump of blood in his ears. It must have been late; kids continued to prowl the streets even after dark, and if it had been before twelve he would have heard them screaming and chasing each other around the estate the way they usually did.
Minutes passed without further knocking, and Sean was about to write the whole thing off as an alcohol-induced hallucination when it came again, this time loud and hard enough to rattle the door in its frame.
‘Fuck this!’ He had a weapon, something a lot more useful than a plastic bottle. He raced across to his bed and dropped to his knees. After a few seconds of fumbling around, he came out with a piece of lead-piping that he’d discovered in his bathroom shortly after moving in. It was weighty, and tapered to almost dangerous proportions on one end.
It would do nicely.
He made his way through the darkness, no longer mindful of the scattered litter. Boxes toppled sideways, beer-cans rolled along the carpet, creating new stains that he wouldn’t give a shit about in the morning.
When he reached the door, he pulled up. It was as if he’d lost the urge, the sudden rush that had caused him to tool up and face the bastards. He was paralysed, and listening intently as his heart threatened to leap up into his throat and choke him.
Nothing again.
This was no good, not at all. He reached down for the key and turned it slowly, quietly. Once the door was unlocked, he took a deep breath and yanked as quickly as possible inwards.
The pipe was raised, ready to smash into the face of any prick willing to try anything. He brought it down, expecting somebody to be on the end of it, and so it was quite a surprise when he realised there was nobody there.
The hallway was completely empty.
He swallowed, tasted bile, and tried to regulate his breathing as best as he could. As if disbelieving the hallway was empty, he took a step out; making sure the weapon in his hand was visible.
‘Fuckin’ cunts!’ he said, a little louder than a whisper. ‘I ain’t sca
red, you little shits!’
The incandescent lights above hummed and swung as if a breeze was washing through the building. A chill ran from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine, and he wanted nothing more than to be back in his flat, sipping cider and trying to get a fucking grip.
Then they were there.
He didn’t know where they came from, but at the end of the hallway stood five hooded figures. His stomach did a somersault as he tried to blink the masked mob away. When he opened his eyes, not only were they still there but they were coming towards him at pace. He could see the masks more clearly now; the Royal Family. Rubber masks that you could buy at any fancy-dress store, and even though they were simple caricatures of human-beings, they were more grotesque than anything you could get for Halloween.
Sean didn’t know why he did what he did next, but it probably had something to do with being scared shitless. Instead of turning and going back into his apartment, where the deadlock may or may not have been enough to keep the gang at bay, he began to run down the hallway. The lead piping in his hand was about as useful as chocolate oven-gloves, and yet he was loath to part with it.
He barged his way through the doors at the end of the hall and stumbled out onto the landing. It was then that he realised he was still drunk. His legs seemed to be working independently, going everywhere but where he needed them to. He glanced through the glass of the slowly-closing door to discover the five figures had almost caught up.
The stairs.
He fell down the first three. He was destined to have a coronary tonight, one way or the other. He managed to grab onto the cold, steel bannister and keep himself upright. By now he was running on pure adrenaline, though the thought of what the masked gang would do to him if they caught up also kept him moving.
What did they want? He’d done nothing, kept himself to himself, and now he was running through the building in the middle of the night, pursued by the Queen and her entire fucking family. It didn’t make sense. If he’d reproached the kids for letting off fireworks in the basement, then he might have understood somebody seeking revenge, or if he’d said something out of order to the bailiffs the previous afternoon—not that he would have—then maybe, just maybe he would have deserved having the fear put into him.